Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak

Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle was old school and stubborn. But after 20 straight losing seasons and his job on the line, he was ready to try anything. So when he met with GM Neal Huntington in October 2012, they decided to discard everything they knew about the game and instead take on drastic "big data" strategies.

Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty

They were America's Team - the high-priced, high-glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL dynasties.

The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball's Power Brokers

In the fall of 1992, America's national pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's very foundation.

Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency

In 1975, five young employees of a sclerotic William Morris agency left to start their own strikingly innovative talent agency. In the years to come, Creative Artists Agency would vault from its origins in a tiny office on the last block of Beverly Hills to become the largest and most imperial, groundbreaking, and star-studded agency Hollywood has ever seen - a company whose tentacles now spread throughout the world of movies, music, television, technology, advertising, sports, and investment banking far more than previously imagined.

Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty

Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player who ever lived. His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don't tell half of Cobb's tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: "Ty Cobb could cause more excitement with a base on balls than Babe Ruth could with a grand slam," one columnist wrote.

The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Thing in Sports

Yahoo's lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports - the pitching arm - and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors.

Bob Vance says:"A MUST READ for every youth baseball parent and coach"

Publisher's Summary

Eerily prescient of times to come, this expos examines drug use in Major League Baseball (MLB)during the mid-1980s and one of the biggest drug trials in baseball history. Through a series of exclusive interviews with FBI agents, U.S. attorneys, defense lawyers, journalists, former baseball executives, physicians, and the dealers themselves, the narrative provides a behind-the-scenes look into how the players managed their habits, the effect of the drugs on their athletic performance, and the ruses the players concocted to keep their drug consumption from becoming public knowledge.

In addition to identifying the players involved, this account reveals how the hapless group of mostly diehard Pittsburgh Pirates fans got into cocaine and connected with the players as well as the often comic deals” that eventually got them busted. Then MLB Commissioner Peter Ueberroth'sfailure to implement a strict drug policy in the aftermath of the trial is also discussed, along with the role this inaction played in enabling the steroid era.

What did you like best about The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven? What did you like least?

The author does an outstanding job of describing the story from all angles.

What did you like best about this story?

The variety of emotion each member of the scandal can be viewed. It ranged from sad to perplexing to hopeful. He left no stone un-turned and the story was great for it.

Would you be willing to try another one of DeMario Clarke’s performances?

No. I actually feel bad for the author. DeMario absolutely butchered the names of some of the key players in the story. Donald Fehr is pronounced Donald Furr. Bowie Kuehn is pronounced Bowieee Cun, not to mention Yaz, and countless other names. Oh, and wait until you hear him pronounce Duquesne University. It definitely adds another layer of humor. I know sports names aren't easy, but if you put your voice on the line to narrate a story you need to do homework on how to pronounce these names. It almost ruined a well written story

Do you think The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

Would you be willing to try another one of DeMario Clarke’s performances?

NO - I can't understand if the butchering of common sports names and places is the narrator's or producer's fault. Routinely butchered - Bowie Kuhn - (pronounced KUN), Houlihan's is mispronounced - countless others that I can't remember at the moment.